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Capt. Harlock -> RE: Civil War 150th (3/18/2014 4:08:46 AM)
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150 Years Ago Today:
On the 18th day of March, 1864, at Nashville, Tennessee, I relieved Lieutenant-General Grant in command of the Military Division of the Mississippi, embracing the Departments of the Ohio, Cumberland Tennessee, and Arkansas ... General Grant was in the act of starting East to assume command of all the armies of the United States, but more particularly to give direction in person to the Armies of the Potomac and James, operating against Richmond, and I accompanied him as far as Cincinnati on his way, to avail myself of the opportunity to discuss privately many little details incident to the contemplated changes, and of preparation for the great events then impending.
--Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman
Neither Sherman nor Grant was fond of holding formal councils of war, so it is quite possible that the train ride to Cincinnati was the most important meeting of the war. It was vital that both clearly understood each other, for Grant's overall strategy depended on a coordinated strategic offensive. Abraham Lincoln had actually tried something like it as far back as February 1862, but the ability to move armies on schedule had not then been mastered. Now, Grant believed, it was time to try it again, with a few important changes.
Grant himself summarized the military situation about as well as any historian has managed in his memoirs:
When I assumed command of all the armies the situation was about this:
The Mississippi River was guarded from St. Louis to its mouth; the line of the Arkansas was held, thus giving us all the North-west north of that river. A few points in Louisiana not remote from the river were held by the Federal troops, as was also the mouth of the Rio Grande. East of the Mississippi we held substantially all north of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad as far east as Chattanooga, thence along the line of the Tennessee and Holston rivers, taking in nearly all of the State of Tennessee. West Virginia was in our hands; and that part of old Virginia north of the Rapidan and east of the Blue Ridge we also held. On the sea-coast we had Fortress Monroe and Norfolk in Virginia; Plymouth, Washington and New Berne in North Carolina; Beaufort, Folly and Morris islands, Hilton Head, Port Royal and Fort Pulaski in South Carolina and Georgia; Fernandina, St. Augustine, Key West and Pensacola in Florida. The balance of the Southern territory, an empire in extent, was still in the hands of the enemy.
In the East the opposing forces stood in substantially the same relations towards each other as three years before, or when the war began; they were both between the Federal and Confederate capitals. It is true, footholds had been secured by us on the sea-coast, in Virginia and North Carolina, but, beyond that, no substantial advantage had been gained by either side. Battles had been fought of as great severity as had ever been known in war, over ground from the James River and Chickahominy, near Richmond, to Gettysburg and Chambersburg, in Pennsylvania, with indecisive results, sometimes favorable to the National army, sometimes to the Confederate army; but in every instance, I believe, claimed as victories for the South by the Southern press if not by the Southern generals.
--The Personal Memoirs of General U.S. Grant
One of the key differences in the coordinated move was this time, Grant would wait for spring and good campaigning weather, rather than move when it was still winter. This would also have the benefit of bringing many of his veterans back from furlough, and with luck they would have inspired new recruits to enlist. The most important difference, however, was that although the movements would be as close to simultaneous as could be managed, there would be priorities. Grant believed that armies were more important than territory, since ground could be taken at leisure when the enemy forces had been neutralized. In the East, the primary objective would be Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, and then, since congress and public opinion demanded it, the city of Richmond. And in the west:
There could have been no difference of opinion as to the first duty of the armies of the military division of the Mississippi. Johnston's army was the first objective, and that important railroad centre, Atlanta, the second. At the time I wrote General Halleck giving my views of the approaching campaign, and at the time I met General Sherman, it was expected that General Banks would be through with the campaign which he had been ordered upon before my appointment to the command of all the armies, and would be ready to co-operate with the armies east of the Mississippi, his part in the programme being to move upon Mobile by land while the navy would close the harbor and assist to the best of its ability. The plan therefore was for Sherman to attack Johnston and destroy his army if possible, to capture Atlanta and hold it, and with his troops and those of Banks to hold a line through to Mobile, or at least to hold Atlanta and command the railroad running east and west, and the troops from one or other of the armies to hold important points on the southern road, the only east and west road that would be left in the possession of the enemy. This would cut the Confederacy in two again, as our gaining possession of the Mississippi River had done before.
--The Personal Memoirs of General U.S. Grant
[image]local://upfiles/4250/5C40A04714D44476A4AEB489797B2DDC.jpg[/image]
Other Union forces would also move in concert, including an offensive in the Shenandoah Valley, and the attempt to capture Mobile, once Nathaniel Banks got back from his cotton-looting expedition up the Red River. These would be side shows, however, and the bulk of reinforcements and supplies would be fed to the forces moving against Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and Johnston's Army of Tennessee. Grant and Sherman would therefore be the primary theater commanders, and they would control not just single armies, but two or three armies each. At the start of the war, Sherman had requested not to be given an independent command, and the complexities of being the military governor of Kentucky had caused him to have what looked very much like a nervous breakdown. Now, he was to be given responsibility for vast territory, and well over a hundred thousand men. The fate of the Union would eventually turn on how well he could handle it.
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